CHAPTER XIV
AMOUNT OF LAND.

EVERY hospital for the insane should possess at least one hundred acres of land, to enable it to have the proper amount for farming and gardening purposes, to give the desired degree of privacy, and to secure adequate and appropriate means of exercise, labor, and occupation for the patients, for all these are now recognized as among the most valuable means of treatment. Of the total amount, as much as fifty acres immediately around the buildings, should be appropriated as pleasure-grounds, and should be so arranged and enclosed as to give the patients the full benefit of them, without being annoyed by the presence of visitors or other strangers, who should never be allowed to pass through them unaccompanied. It is desirable that several acres of this tract should be in groves or woodland, to furnish shade in summer, and its general character should be such as will admit of tasteful and agreeable improvements. To enable the patients generally to have the greatest possible amount of benefit from their pleasure-grounds,—where both sexes are treated in one building,—those appropriated to the men and women should be entirely distinct; and one of the best means of separating them, will be found to be the appropriation of a strip of neutral ground, between their separate limits, properly enclosed by an open palisade, as a park for various kinds of animals, or otherwise handsomely cultivated. While less than one hundred acres should be deemed too little for any institution, State hospitals having a large number of farmers or working men, will find it useful to possess at least double that amount; and extensive walks and drives on the hospital premises offer so many advantages, that the possession of a large tract for this purpose alone, is often desirable. It is hardly possible under any circumstances, for such an institution to control too much land immediately around it.